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CFTC Commissioner Reviews Current Regulation of Cryptocurrencies

CFTC Commissioner Brian Quintenz described deficiencies in U.S. regulation of cryptocurrencies and identified potential developments in the “broader tokenization revolution.”

In remarks before the Eurofi High Level Seminar, Mr. Quintenz encouraged international regulators to develop different regulations for (i) cryptocurrencies that serve only as a medium of exchange or store of value and (ii) for tokens that are intended to represent physical assets.

Mr. Quintenz asserted that, in the future, a cryptocurrency’s “volatility and transferability” could compare reasonably well even against a sovereign currency. In this “broader tokenization revolution,” Mr. Quintenz outlined three motivations that may further increase the use of tokens: (i) tokenizing a company’s product as a marketing ploy; (ii) creating a token to improve efficiency of the blockchain construct for assigning and tracking ownership, coined as “the back office tokenization revolution”; and (iii) harnessing the flexibility of tokens to create a secondary market for non-tangible items.

Domestically, Mr. Quintenz called for better regulatory oversight for cryptocurrencies, particularly in the area of spot trades. He explained that the CFTC has regulatory authority only over derivatives on commodity cryptocurrencies and cannot regulate the spot transactions in such currencies, although it does retain enforcement authority over these markets to the extent that there is fraudulent conduct. According to Mr. Quintenz, this means that “the CFTC can only police fraud and manipulation in the actual trading of cryptocurrencies, but has no ability to make platforms register with the Commission or set any customer protection policies.”

To strengthen regulatory oversight, Mr. Quintenz said that the CFTC is launching an initiative to educate customers on cryptocurrency and potential fraud, “aggressively target[ing]” incidents of fraud and manipulation, and collaborating with the SEC. He argued that the “patchwork” nature of state and federal regulation will not be enough. Mr. Quintenz recommends the cryptocurrency spot platforms form an “SRO-like entity” to regulate customer protection rules and legitimize the markets. Mr. Quintenz emphasized, however, that an SRO-like entity is not a sufficient replacement for federal oversight.

Lofchie Comment: This is at least the second time that Commissioner Quintenz has pushed for cryptocurrency exchanges to establish a self-regulatory organization. This is unlikely to happen. For self-regulation to be really effective, the firms or exchanges that deem themselves to be compliant have to be able to “punish” the non-compliant firms in some way. When several firms gang up against another, that raises significant antitrust issues. Broker-dealers can do this in the securities markets because the Supreme Court recognizes that Congress has given broker-dealers a limited exemption by providing for the establishment of SROs, as has been the case under the Commodity Exchange Act. There is nothing similar for cryptomarkets. In any case, this market is far too young and fast-moving for an SRO system to develop.